The illustrative embodiments disclosed in the present application are useful in systems including those for creating documents having metadata and more particularly are useful in systems including those for creating documents having metadata using a pointing device such as a digital pen.
Traditional paper based forms are used in many situations. Typically, a form will include pre-printed information and pre-printed boxes for data input. Such a traditional form might be filled in be a salesman in the field. In such a situation, a salesman would fill in some information on the form and send the form to a central processing location by mail or facsimile. The data on the form would typically be scanned or keyed in by an operator.
A user may wish to attach metadata storage to a document such that the attached storage contains data that is in some way related to the document that the storage device is attached to. The storage typically includes an electronic version of the document in addition to the metadata that relates in some way to the information on the document. For example, a user may have an augmented document that is a piece of paper with an rf-id tag attached to it. The user may then write on the document with a pen, scan the document into a computer to create an electronic copy of the written page. The user may then associate some metadata with the electronic copy into the computer and then use a separate tag writer to write the tag. The computer repository then associates the electronic copy with the physical document having the filled rf-id tag. Accordingly, a user must scan the document to create an electronic copy of a document.
A reference entitled Programmable Physical Document is shown in U.S. patent application Publication No. US 2002/0080386 A1, published Jun. 27, 2002 to Snowdon, et al., and is incorporated herein by reference.